Originally Posted By: Pablo
Yes the picture shows the media attach as marginal. Also you can bring Gary into it as well. No one from Amsoil says P1 is a bad filter, and Gary only said it can become more restrictive than an EaO with extended OCI's.
I hardly call that bias and your silly reference to the 4-ball test is about what?? Come on man, that's lame.
Sorry to interject, but here's my take as an uninterested bystander. I don't think that the comments were a slam on you; they didn't seem that way to me as an objective reader. I think his point was that anecdotal evidence and irrelevant testing procedures can be used to verify whatever results one wishes to have verified.
You buy one P1 and it's defective, there may be a problem. You buy 999 more, and they're all fine, the problem seems a lot smaller. You buy 999 more, and they're all defective, then there is a serious problem.
Anecdotal evidence tends to favour emotional bias. My brother once brought one Lincoln Town Car from his cab fleet for me to change his oil. He brought the filter and the oil. I did my thing, made sure the gasket came off with the filter, cleaned up, lubed the new gasket, and so forth. He starts it up, and we have oil everywhere. It's coming from the filter. I don't even remember what brand it was, but I do recall it was not Fram. I told him to take this thing and toss it in the garbage, gave him my keys and told him to come back with a Motorcraft FL-1A, since I knew it would work.
So, what happened? Was it a bad brand? A defective single filter? I know I was mad, but not mad enough to recall which brand filter it was and to put them on my permanent black list.
Filters are manufactured parts, and manufactured parts can be defective. We all like to gripe about Fram, deserved or otherwise. I like Wix and Motorcraft. That being said, I'm not naive enough to think that Wix, Motorcraft, FleetGuard, Bosch, Purolator, AC-Delco, M1, Denso, and AMSOIL have never let a defective filter leave the assembly line and wind up in a consumer's hands.
The 4-ball test provides a certain result. The question has always been whether or not its relevant to the rigours that oils face in the real world. Under normal, room temperature conditions, one litre of 0w-30 oil will tend to vacate a funnel faster than one litre of 15w-40. What does this prove about the quality of the oil? Nothing.
You pointed out yourself that there's no one best filter out there. That is quite likely the most accurate, honest statement made by anyone in this thread.